It’s a part of the culture: band reunions and anniversary reissues. You’ve had a couple of Jam and solo anniversary reissues, and there’ll be more, I expect…
What about when I die? Fucking hell, mate!
But what’s your response when the record company asks for your involvement in an anniversary reissue?
It depends, really. Generally, haven’t we got enough anniversary box sets? I personally think we have, which will sound contradictory because like you say, they’ve put enough of mine out. Sometimes it works. They did a good one on Stanley Road. There was some nice outtakes and there was a nice DVD that went with it. Some of them are pointless to me. There isn’t any material, there aren’t any hidden gems, it’s just people fucking around with demos or half-formed songs. But I was never interested in the demos. I was always into the finished versions. I’ve got some Beatles bootlegs which have got one whole side is different takes of “Strawberry Fields” with bits added to it. What’s the fucking point? All I want to hear is the finished track in all its glory. I’m not even particularly interested in how they built it up, to me it spoils the magic. But that’s the way it is. I don’t know if I could put my foot down and say “You can’t do that,” because they own it all. You might as well get involved and make sure they do a half decent job on it.
Do you have an archive?
No. It’s all been out by now. There’s only a few bits of me scratching me arm or whatever it may be.
There’s no shed in the depths of Surrey, then?
A bunker? No. I had this ritual, all my notebooks, after I finished a record, I’d either burn them or cut them into little pieces. It’s only recently that a mate of mine said, “You should have kept all them.” So I’ve started keeping them now anyway.
Did you see the David Bowie exhibition at the V&A?
No, I missed it. But I was never big on keeping things. I suppose more recently I’ve turned round to it, maybe as I’ve been getting older. My feelings was always: get rid of it, burn it, move on.
You’ve been working with the Strypes recently. It’s tempting to ask, do you see anything of yourself at that age in them?
What, the “youthful energy”? I can see that. Josh, he’s somewhere else with his guitar playing. He’s fucking another level, I could never have played as good as him, I couldn’t play as good as him now. I think he’s really, really special. But they’re a good little band, I think, they just need to carry on writing, and let them evolve naturally and don’t force them into something. But to me, they all seem committed to what they’re doing. Whether the management or the record company let them develop, who knows these days? But either way, Josh will do something. He’s fucking brilliant. When I was doing that record with them, he must have done four or five lead guitar takes and every solo was fucking brilliant. It was hard to pick a bad one.
Do you wish when you’d been that age there’d been someone from an older generation there to give you a helping hand?
Yeah, but all those Sixties guys were too fucking tight, weren’t they? They really were so protective of their own thing, all of them. I never got any encouraging words from any of those people. Maybe because you go through this period of time when you get to an older age like I have, I have played with some of my heroes. I never really got any of that from any of my heroes, I’ve had more in recent years but I think maybe I’ve earned the right to be… I don’t know. But it’s different now. I played with Macca, I played with Ray Davies, Ron Wood, Kenney and Mac from the Small Faces and Faces. I’ve played with a lot of my childhood heroes in recent years. But there wasn’t that same vibe then. I don’t think they were necessarily scared of punk, but they were very protective of the territory they’d built, which doesn’t make sense to me. You’ve got to embrace the youth. Without them, you don’t exist anyway so what the fuck? Surely you want to see it continuing, someone’s got to take it on. Not necessarily because they’re influenced by you, but just taking rock’n’roll onto the next generation. I’m quite conscious of that, but I don’t feel threatened by the Strypes or something. It isn’t like that.
You’ve not done much production before, have you?
No. Not if I can help it, no. I have done a bit more recently. It’s just because it’s so boring in the studio. It’s boring at the best of times. I did the thing with the Strypes, I’ve done this new track which I’m still working on with the band called White Room who are from Brighton. They could only work in half term. It’s a fucking good track, that. They’ve got a good singer. I’ve done some stuff with Miles recently, Miles Kane. I’m always up for working with anyone, regardless of age.
As you yourself get older, do you find it reassuring that artists like Paul McCartney and Ray Davies are still making records into their sixties and seventies?
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I’ve seen Paul McCartney two or three times in recent years, and I thought he was fucking great. I saw the Stones at the o2 a couple of years ago, that was the first time I’ve seen them, and they were great. But why shouldn’t they continue making music? All that ‘Year zero’ with punk was just bullshit all that, that was a load of bollocks all of it. It was a very short term vision really. I’m in it for the long haul. If there’s a jazz sax player who plays up until the time they fall off the stage or die in their hotel bedrooms, that’s kind of romantic and appreciated. But why shouldn’t the rock’n’rollers do that as well? John Lee Hooker doing his last gig, and then going home to say goodbye to everyone – “See you,” you know – and then going home and dying. Play up until the time you die. So I can kind of see that. I never thought I’d get to 56, you know. Who could ever imagine being 50, even, or 20 or something? Another planet. But it happens. It happens really quickly. 15 years elapsed since the last greatest hits. Where’s that gone? So I think I’m aware of that now. I’m also aware that you don’t really get very long. I used to think you did, but you don’t get very long at all. So you’ve got to try and pack as much as you can in as you possibly can. I’d like to leave a big body of work when I go, for whatever it’s worth, for subsequent generations or whatever. Just as we pick up a book written by someone from 200 hundred years ago, or a record made in the 1940s and get something from it. I can only hope I’ll be part of that as well, if that’s not too lofty.